You've been selling your homemade achar at the local bazaar for two years. Your neighbour's kids beg for your momos every weekend. Your cousin keeps saying, "Didi, you should sell these online." But where do you even start — and how do you do it properly, without getting into trouble?
This guide walks you through the real steps: getting the right licences in Nepal, packaging food so it survives a delivery run, and setting up digital orders from day one so you can grow beyond your immediate circle.
Step 1: Register Your Business Properly
Before you take a single online order, spend one afternoon sorting out paperwork. It protects you, builds customer trust, and is required if you ever want to supply to shops or hotels.
Municipality Business Registration
Go to your local ward office (वडा कार्यालय) or municipality and apply for a व्यवसाय दर्ता (business registration). For a home-based food business this is usually straightforward and costs a few hundred rupees annually. Bring your citizenship card, a passport photo, and a brief description of what you're making and selling.
PAN Registration
Register for a Permanent Account Number (PAN) with the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) — there is no fee. A PAN is required to open a business bank account and to issue receipts. Without it you cannot provide invoices that B2B buyers can use for their own tax filings, which closes off a whole customer segment from day one.
VAT: Only If You Grow Big Enough
You only need to register for VAT if your annual turnover crosses NPR 50 lakhs (NPR 5 million) for goods. Most momo or achar businesses starting out are nowhere near this threshold. Register for PAN, skip VAT for now, and revisit when your sales grow.
Food Licence from DFTQC
The Department of Food Technology and Quality Control (DFTQC), under the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, is Nepal's food safety authority. If you're producing packaged food items — bottled achar, dried snacks, frozen momos for retail — you need a food registration or licence under the Food Act.
- Food Registration: For smaller-scale producers. Submit your municipality registration, a sample label, an ingredient list, and a short processing description.
- Food Licence: Required at higher production volumes or for export. Involves a facility inspection by a DFTQC officer.
- Fresh ready-to-eat items: If you're making and delivering fresh momos the same day, the requirements are lighter — but municipality registration and basic hygiene compliance still apply.
The DFTQC has its main office in Kathmandu and regional offices in major cities. For small producers, registration often completes within a few weeks. Don't skip this step — it lets you print an official registration number on your label, which customers increasingly expect before trusting a packaged food brand.
Step 2: Package for Delivery — Not Just for Your Neighbour
Packaging is where many home-based food businesses fall apart when they go online. A momo that looks great in your kitchen can arrive as a soggy mess if you haven't thought through the packaging for a 45-minute bike ride across Kathmandu.
Practical Packaging Rules
- Liquid and semi-liquid items (achar, chutney): Use leak-proof plastic jars or glass bottles with proper lids. Test by turning the filled container upside down and shaking it — if it leaks in your kitchen, it will leak in a delivery bag.
- Fresh momos for delivery: Use microwave-safe rigid containers. Separate the dipping sauce in a small sealed pot. A kraft box with paper cushioning reduces movement and looks more professional.
- Shelf-stable packaged products: Heat-sealed pouches or labelled jars. Your label must include the DFTQC registration number, ingredient list, net weight, batch number, manufacturing date, and best-before date — these are legally required for packaged food in Nepal.
- Temperature-sensitive items: Communicate refrigeration requirements clearly on your product page, coordinate delivery timing, and use insulated bags. An item that arrives spoiled will earn a bad review that stays online forever.
Step 3: Set Up Digital Orders From Day One
The moment you have your business registration and a product ready to ship, you can start taking orders online. You do not need a warehouse, a staff of five, or a custom-built website.
Accept Digital Payments Immediately
Nepal's two dominant digital wallets — eSewa and Khalti — are what most of your customers already use daily. Set up merchant accounts on both. This lets customers pay before delivery, which reduces order cancellations and the no-show problem that plagues COD-only businesses.
For customers who prefer direct transfer, share your bank account QR code (most Nepal banks issue these now). For customers not yet comfortable paying online, Cash on Delivery (COD) remains very popular — especially outside Kathmandu. Offer both options from launch day rather than forcing customers onto a payment method they don't trust yet.
Build a Simple Online Store
You need a place where customers can browse your products, see prices in NPR, and place orders without having to WhatsApp you for every single item. A proper online store also lets you manage inventory and scale during busy seasons without chaos.
Dashain and Tihar are the peak weeks for food gifting in Nepal — achar gift sets, sel roti combos, and bulk orders spike sharply. If you're still managing orders through DMs in October, you will miss orders, annoy customers, and burn yourself out. A platform like Saauzi — built for the Nepal market with eSewa and Khalti built in — lets you handle online and in-person POS orders from one dashboard, so the festival rush doesn't break you.
Sort Out Delivery
For the Kathmandu Valley, Pathao and Delivery (delivery.com.np) are the most commonly used third-party options for food businesses — both offer same-day delivery and COD passthrough. Outside the Valley, Nepal Post or regional courier services are the realistic options, or you set up a local pickup point to avoid the logistics problem entirely at first.
When starting out, doing your own deliveries or using a local bike rider per trip is completely fine. The key is to set clear delivery zones and timing windows on your store so customers know what to expect before they order — not after they've been waiting two hours.
Step 4: Plan for Dashain and Tihar From Month One
Even if you launch in February, plan your festival strategy now. Dashain-Tihar season (usually October) is when food gifting peaks and a well-prepared small brand can punch far above its weight.
- Create gift-pack combinations — three varieties of achar in a basket, or a momo kit with dipping sauce — and price them with gifting in mind.
- Stock up on packaging materials at least a month before the festival. Suppliers in Kathmandu run short as the season approaches.
- Set a pre-order cutoff date and publish it clearly on your store. Customers respect clear deadlines far more than vague promises.
- If you expect a surge beyond your production capacity, pause new orders rather than overpromising delivery times. A refund is painful; a late Dashain gift is unforgivable.
The Honest Part: What Takes Time
DFTQC registration takes a few weeks. Building a repeat customer base takes months. Digital marketing on Facebook and Instagram — where most Nepali food businesses find their early customers — requires consistency, not one lucky viral reel.
What you can control from day one: your licences, your packaging quality, and your payment setup. Get those three right and everything else has a real foundation to build on.
Your Next Step This Week
Go to your ward office and start the business registration process. While that's being processed, set up your eSewa merchant account and photograph your products in good natural light. By the time your registration arrives, you'll have a store ready for customers — not the other way around. The best time to formalise your side hustle was last year. The second best time is this week.
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